How to pick your UCAS choices

When I decided I wanted to go to Uni in the UK, I was 16 and I didn’t have any clue on how to do it and where to start. After a few researches, I stumbled across UCAS and what it was (if you don’t know anything about it, you can read more info here). I soon realised I had to pick 5 different courses to apply to, that was the max possible.

My UCAS choices

At the time, I was applying to study Physics. My choices were Oxford, Imperial, Uni of Manchester and UCL. I made those choices based on what I wanted to study and the Physics departments’ ranks. I clearly didn’t have a strategy and I completely missed to add a fifth University.

However, there are strategies and tips you can apply to when you are making up your mind. The first thing is to choose one subject you want to study. In my case, it was Physics. The second step is to consider all the Universities that are actually offering courses in this subject, list them all. You can find several websites on the internet, which provide rankings.

After you have the whole list, you can now think about your exam results. Universities’ offers can be conditional or unconditional. This means you either get in right away or you have to full fill some requirements. These are your A level results or similar for international students, which also have a language requirement. In my case, I had to take one between TOEFL, IELTS or Cambridge.

The strategy

Thinking about your results is fundamental. At this point, you can’t choose Universities based on the ones you love, but those where you can actually get in. If you go to the departments’ webpages, you should be able to find their requirements and possible conditional offers, so based on these you are already one step ahead.

The best split would be to choose a difficult, two “doable” and two easy ones. The difficult needs to be there to inspire you to always aim at the top. The doables are your game and that’s where you have to bet and compete. While the two easy ones are the plan C, if everything goes wrong.

At the time, I knew my grades were pretty good and I could reach the max; so I didn’t take into account the Universities’ conditional offers before applying. In the end, I passed the admission test for Oxford and I was invited for interviews. I spent three days there and had 3 interviews with 2 different colleges (Merton and University). After the weekend, they sent me a nice rejection letter.

On the other hand, Imperial College rejected me on the basis of my grades. This was my real first choice, the one I was considering doable. It was a massive punch in the face. Manchester and UCL accepted me with no problem and gave me a conditional offer. However, I was so mentally wrecked by the rejections I decided to switch course and apply to Computer Science.

My parents couldn’t believe what I was doing. I still don’t understand why I did it, but in the end, I went to the University of Manchester to study Computer Science for four years. All my experiences have been blogged about here.

UCAS is a tough one, so build a strategy before applying, ask for advice and make the right choices that fit you. 🙂